Bodies completed
On the physical rehabilitation of lower limb amputees
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4815032 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michal Hoffman (Hebrew University, Israel, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 229-245 |
| Publication date | 2013-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Health An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1363-4593 • E-ISSN: 1461-7196 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1363459312451177 |
| PMID | 22801875 |
| OpenAlex | W2142614621 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 41 |
This ethnographic study, based on empirical work carried out in an Israeli rehabilitation hospital, discusses the physical rehabilitation of lower limb amputees, during which body normalcy is re-constructed. Throughout the process, physiotherapists serve as social agents who teach pragmatic and discursive practices to manage the body as well as the prosthesis in the re-cultivation of body techniques. The findings, portraying four spheres of meaning, show that the mere use of prosthesis is insufficient since it stigmatizes the body as absent a limb. To avoid such stigmatization, the staff teach compensatory and discursive skills which enable incorporation of the prosthesis in body techniques while referring to it as a biological leg. Constructed as a 'social organ', the device is gradually transformed from an extension to an integral part of the body. Disability and its remedies, thereby concealed, facilitate able-bodied performance. Paradoxically, the prosthesis, though meant to benefit patients, induces pain and discomfort, a fact that challenges the acceptance of its conventionality as a medical aid for amputees. Yet, physical rehabilitation by means of prosthetics remains one of the many medical practices in Israel that ensure a disability-free society, together with the promotion of rights to accessibility and anti-discrimination regulation. The study contributes to the theoretical debate regarding the relationship between the biological and the social in disability studies. The findings indicate the need to encompass the cultural and the corporeal when exploring disability. The ethnography of disability, I suggest, should be viewed as a juncture of socio-cultural perceptions of the body, embedded in its own corporeal constraints
Amputation · Epistemology · Ethnography · Phantom limb · Physical body · Physical medicine and rehabilitation · Physical therapy · Political science · Politics · Prosthesis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Disability Rights and Representation · Law · Medicine · Nursing · Organ and Tissue Transplantation Research · Psychology · Reconstructive Surgery and Microvascular Techniques · Social Psychology · Rehabilitation
Disability Rights and Wrongs
Culture of Pain
Stigma
Medicine, Rationality and Experience
The Disability Studies Reader
Pain as Human Experience
On the Government of Disability
Outline of a Theory of Practice
Women, Body, Illness
Gender and the Social Construction of Illness
The Body and Social Theory
The Body & Society
Natural Symbols
Bringing Bodies Back in
Medicine, rationality, and experience
Defending the Social Model
Naturalistic inquiry
The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body
Disability as Masquerade
The concept of therapeutic 'emplotment
The Art of (Re)Learning to Walk
The Social Meanings of Prosthesis Use
Medical sociology and the biological body
Mapping Reflexive Body Techniques
Bodily Dys-Order
Body, Image and Affect in Consumer Culture
Constructing Hope
Disciplining Bodies at Risk
Is anybody there? Critical realism, chronic illness and the disability debate
Techniques of the body∗
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,3 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2018 (3) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |